manners as
this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his heart,
inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with
the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor
Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street, but
there was a restraint and terror within him. This respectable old
gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period of life had given some pledge
or other to the Evil Principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the
sacrifice of his daughter.

It so happened that the parlor door was partly of glass shaded by a
silken curtain the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was the
merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair
Polly and the gallant Feathertop that after quitting the room he could
by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the curtain.
But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen--nothing except the
trifles previously noticed, to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
environing the pretty Polly. The stranger, it is true, was evidently a
thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed,
and therefore the sort of person to whom a parent ought not to confide
a simple young girl without due watchfulness for the result. The worthy
magistrate, who had been conversant with all degrees and qualities of
mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture of the
distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place. Nothing had been
left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had
incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him
into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything
completely and consummately artificial in human shape that the person
impresses us as an unreality, and as having hardly pith enough to cast
a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a
wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.

But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading
the room--Feathertop with his dainty stride, and no less dainty
grimace, the girl with a native maidenly grace just touched, not
spoiled, by a slightly affected manner which seemed caught from the
perfect artifice of her companion. The longer the interview continued,
the more char